The first kiss

She doesn’t remember the date or day when he had kissed her for the first time, but she still remembers how it had felt. As if it had been just yesterday.

She remembers the exact moment when something had changed in his eyes – something had come into his eyes that had not been there before. There was something beautiful – almost possessive – in the way he put his arm around her waist, pulled her near, and kissed her, soft and tender, on the street, in full view of anyone who cared to watch, not that there was a huge crowd present or anything. A line had been crossed, in a good way, and they had entered into a bond which was different from the bond of friendship that they had been sharing till then.

She had been wearing his coat – scant protection against the rain that had been beating down since morning, which he had insisted that she wear, anyways – and she could smell the lime of his cologne. They had gotten lost in the moment, and hadn’t even noticed that the umbrella that they had been carrying had dropped to the ground.

She remembers how he had tasted of coffee and chocolate that day. How her knees had buckled with the kiss. How she had felt all woman. How she had wanted more. How she had felt like the most beautiful woman in the world. How she had felt like the only woman in the world. How she had suddenly turned into a princess. How the kiss had felt like a warm hearth on a heartless winter day. How she had felt enveloped in rainbows and roses and sunbeams and stars and everything beautiful, all the stuff of mushy movies and books. It had felt charming, romantic, a gesture from another time.

She hadn’t been able to name the strange but beautiful sensation that emerged in her heart, but it had felt like something she had been waiting all her life to arrive.

There had been nothing vulgar, nothing cheap, nothing slanderous about the way he had kissed her. And in the way she had kissed him back. It had felt natural. She still remembers how everything had felt magical at that moment, destined, as if that was the way it was always meant to be.

When she had come to, she had realised that that moment had been one of the very few times she hadn’t been terrorised by the thought of meeting a man just like her ex-husband, a man who had loved giving her big, fat bruises on her face if she refused to kiss him. She had realised that she had been bruised, but not scarred. She had realised that she had walked away from her ex, really and truly, and from all the sorts of pain he had inflicted. She had crossed over from darkness to light. She had allowed herself to. She had tided over the dreadfulness and she had, really and truly, arrived home.